Suppose that a small group consisting of, say, ten people is deciding whether to adopt some bold new initiative. If one or two advocates speak first, they might well shift the entire room in their preferred direction. The same is true if skeptics speak first. At least this is so if people are influenced by one another—and they usually are. For this reason, otherwise similar groups might end up making very different judgments simply because of who spoke first and initiated the equivalent of early downloads.
